Tuesday, October 4, 2011

When I was a kid, I read these dinosaur books that I loved reading over and over again. Each book focused on a certain dinosaur and had many colorful illustrations each page. I loved the bright colors and the drawings. I learned about brontosauruses, tyrannosauruses, stegosauruses, and triceratops. I especially loved brontosauruses. In that book, I remember to this day, there was fabled to be a HUGE sauropod called an ultrasaurus that was rumored to be the largest dinosaur ever.

Fast-forward to today. As of now, I have this idea for a picture book that centers around a pterodactyl learning to fly and early flying machines. To prepare for this picture book, I had to start doing research on dinosaurs. It was like being a kid again. I have forgotten how cool they were. Apparently too, since those childhood books of yesteryear to today, a lot about the understanding of dinosaurs has changed. These are the top facts which surprised me when I researched:

1. Pterosaurs (pterodactyls and other flying thingies) are not considered dinosaurs. Only related.
2. Though many dinosaurs died off, some saurischians were considered to evolve into birds. Those closest related to them were raptors and t-rexes. An archaeoptyrx is considered a link between the two.
3. Dinosaurs could have possibly had fur and/or hair. Most likely to have hair were smaller dinosaurs that needed insulation to keep them warm during the seasons.
4. Lots of scientists agree that dinosaurs were warm blooded or a stage of between cold and warm blooded animals. Though the climate was considered much warmer during the Mesozoic Era, the amount of energy needed to move and be agile for dinosaurs requires warmer blood.
5. The ultrasaurus of my childhood was an incomplete skeleton found in Utah and is no longer considered the largest dinosaur ever. Rather, it was considered a large specimen of a brachiosaurus. The largest considered though was found in Argentina called an argetinosaurus believing to weigh at 100 tons (only a partial skeleton was found though).

Now some drawings. Note: I know that ankylosauruses are much bigger than raptors. I wanted to use the entire page.